by CM Thompson
Colvin thinks of the Anne-Marie she saw in the crime scene photographs, the remains she saw in the house, everything they have seen so far is conclusive of long-term alcohol abuse. Anne-Marie’s body screamed clear signs of malnourishment and personal neglect over a long period of time. Was this woman really that blind to her daughter?
Col-Vin is looking at Sherri in a way she doesn’t like. Col-Vin is the stupid one here, not her, she decides. Sherri has had enough of this and finally asks the officers for what she came here for.
“Can I see my daughter now?”
The only thing that the police would tell Sherri was that there had been an “incident.” Whatever that fucking meant! They had confirmed that her daughter was dead as nicely as they could, and she just wanted to punch them in the face for being so condescending. Then they wasted even more of her time by asking her stupid questions. Questions that hinted that she had been missing something, insinuating that they knew something about her daughter or the dork that she didn’t.
They had told her that it was best that she didn’t see her daughter, but she insisted. She is glad she insisted. Even though it meant she had to wait for two hours, whilst they messed around. If she hadn’t, then she would have believed them when they said her daughter had had an incident. She would also have believed them when they told her that Anne-Marie didn’t suffer, didn’t feel a thing.
Her baby was bruised, battered. In death she looked neglected and half-starved. So small and still so young. She didn’t look like her daughter, this was a stranger in a hospital gown, a stranger with her daughter’s face. The nurses had carefully covered Anne-Marie’s legs and feet, hiding some of the worst of the damage; they had even gone as far as to seal Anne-Marie’s large head wound but couldn’t hide it completely, and they couldn’t hide all of the bruises either.
Sherri’s hand reaches out and grabs a small tuft of Anne-Marie’s shorn hair, it feels greasy and cold. She remembers stroking baby Anne-Marie’s curls, plaiting her play-school hair. So many times she had stroked this hair in comfort, and now it’s just this, the tainted memories of a butchered haircut and nothing more. Sherri grips the hair tightly as she leans down, promising silently to her daughter that bastard wasn’t going to get away with this. She seals the promise by planting one last tender kiss on her daughter’s cold forehead.
There is nothing accidental about this.
Chapter Nine
Grimm is in a grim mood. His new shoes are too tight, causing a throbbing blister to form on his right foot. Normally this wouldn’t be much of a problem but today he is conducting door-to-door interviews of the Mills’ neighbourhood with Colvin, a job that involves walking around, standing around and looking polite. A job that needs to be done quickly, before people forget important details. They have left Mr Mills at the police station. He is not under lock and key, nothing and no one is holding him, but Daniel has consented to stay longer, under their protection, providing breakfast is provided.
It’s a weekday morning; they are expecting most of the neighbourhood to be at work, but still they have to be seen making an effort. They start at the top of the road. Grimm makes sure that Colvin walks on his left side, so she doesn’t see his slight limp. There is no answer at the first house. They both notice the expensive security features, along with the look of abandonment. The second house looks more derelict, a long-standing For Sale sign planted firmly in the overgrown front garden. They try the doorbell anyway but no answer. Grimm is starting to think this will be quick and easy. The next house on the row is firmly marked with DO NOT CROSS tape. Not that the neighbourhood needed any warning not to cross Anne-Marie’s doorstep. Maybe it is because she has been inside there, but Colvin feels a chill sweep down her spine despite the sweltering heat. She looks up expecting to see Anne-Marie’s face scowling down at her, but nothing.
At the neighbouring house they walk down a small path, edged with carefully manicured flowers and lovingly fixed garden gnomes. A considerable amount of time and effort has been made into making this garden look pretty, such a huge contrast to the previous homes. Loud, cheerful chimes emit from behind the door as Grimm presses the doorbell, and Colvin suspects that someone slightly hard of hearing lives in this house.
An elderly woman with a tightly drawn face answers the door and fixes them both with an unforgiving stare. “Can I help you?”
“Good morning, Madam, I am DCI Grimm. Are you free to talk to us for a few minutes?”
There are a few moments’ hesitation, the lady is not responding well to Grimm’s boyish grin. Colvin gets the feeling that if they weren’t police officers, they would have been told politely but firmly to bugger off. Reluctantly, the door opens wide enough to let them both in but closes quickly again. The house is a mirror image of the Mills’ house but it couldn’t be more different. The Mills had favoured bare walls, dirt and minimalism, this lady had patterned, faded wallpaper and ornaments, so many ornaments, and each one positioned in its own special place. Knick-knacks from holidays in Hawaii, York and Africa anoint the walls, giving the house a more welcoming vibe than its occupant.
They sit down and the lady sits opposite them, neatly smoothing the creases in her beige skirt as she sits.
“Can I take your name please?”
“Mrs Ludmilla Bryski.”
Ludmilla in the good old days would have offered the officers a cup of tea or a piece of home-made cake, but her goodwill has long gone. She stares at them wearily. She doesn’t even ask them why they are here. She seems to have been expecting them and just wants to get this over with. She nods expectantly whilst Grimm explains that they have questions regarding her neighbour, Anne-Marie Mills. Colvin has already noted that Mrs Bryski had made quite a few official complaints against her neighbour. There were a number of official complaints listed for this area, not all of them regarding Anne-Marie Mills. Whilst Ludmilla Bryski does seem genuinely shocked to hear that Anne-Marie is dead, Colvin also notes a tiny flash of guilty relief.
“… we just wanted to know if you heard anything out of the ordinary yesterday,” Grimm finishes.
“I heard her yelling and screaming again yesterday. Once she starts that, I turn the radio up to block her out.” But not too loud, too loud would mean Anne-Marie hammering her door, screaming for her to turn it down, “you old bat”.
“Do you hear her yelling often?”
“More often than I can stand,” Ludmilla snaps, shocking herself with her own bitterness. She continues more softly: “They have been fighting a lot more recently … it’s starting to get to me … I call you and call you but no one stops her.” Both officers have the grace to look away in mock or genuine guilt. It wasn’t just Daniel Mills who had been brought to the breaking point by Anne-Marie. There have been several meetings between the neighbours and their lawyers discussing the “problem” and how to get rid of it, legally. The last piece of useless advice was “to document Anne-Marie Mills behaviour, then in a few weeks …” BUT they needed a solution faster than that.
“I am sorry to hear that,” Grimm says. “Did you hear what she was yelling?”
Ludmilla shakes her head.
“Do you remember what time you heard the yelling?”
“I don’t know, sometime around half-twelve.” Ludmilla closes her eyes and leans slightly back. “During the one o’clock news I heard the front door slam and I thought I saw Daniel going past. I could hear her screaming and smashing things. Then it was quiet for a while. Then she started smashing again so I turned the radio up again.” Ludmilla omits to mention that she heard Anne-Marie crying whilst she was smashing. It seemed heartless to say that now. She didn’t want to explain what happened the last time she showed Anne-Marie pity.
“Do you remember what time you heard the second lot of smashing?”
“Two-thirty,” Ludmilla replies bitterly. It had been right in the middle of her favourite radio programme, so she is definitely sure of the time. Ludmilla remembers remarking to her husband Paul that sh
e couldn’t even enjoy the programme any more because of next door. Not that Anne-Marie ever bothered Paul. Paul is too deaf to hear any of Anne-Marie’s antics. The only time Paul has ever really been shaken by Anne-Marie was when she was screaming in their faces that she would smash their heads in if they called the fucking police again.
On Daniel’s prompting, the next day Anne-Marie had brought them a bunch of wilted flowers and a muttered apology and, in Paul’s opinion, that made everything quite alright. “Just ignore her, dear Ludmilly,” was Paul’s usual response, along with “She is harmless” or “She is just drunk again, Ludmilly, we all do stupid things when we are drunk.”
Not Ludmilla, Ludmilla doesn’t drink and, unlike some people, has never been drunk. She had become quite suspicious of Paul’s pre-retirement “working lates” and post-retirement trips to see the lads. “She is just blowing off steam Ludmilly,” Paul had said when Anne-Marie had started a screaming match at three in the morning. Ludmilla couldn’t understand why her husband was so forgiving towards Anne-Marie. Perhaps she should have believed Lying Penny when she said that Paul and Anne-Marie were occasionally drinking partners, occasionally another kind of partner too. She didn’t want to believe that Paul was capable of such things. No, Lying Penny is a liar, a liar who knows which lies will get the most attention. Ludmilla has promised herself not to fall again for her lies. Ludmilla had caught Anne-Marie and Paul discussing something earnestly in private. Anne-Marie scowled at the sight of her and quickly stormed off. Paul had only chuckled when she asked him what was going on.
“Just doing her a favour, my dear Luddy.” When she had tried to probe him for more information, he had changed the subject and infuriated her by saying: “You know she is not a bad gal, Luddy, you really should apologise to her.”
“Did you hear or see anything else?” Grimm asks, interrupting her memories. Ludmilla isn’t sure if she had heard a scream later on or if it had been the radio. At the time she told herself it was the radio. She doesn’t want to mislead the officers. It probably was the radio. She shakes her head, no.
“How long have you been neighbours with the Mills?”
Too damn long is the answer she wants to give, but Ludmilla doesn’t use uncouth words. “Four years.” She hasn’t had a regular good night’s sleep in years now.
The Mills had seemed like such a nice couple when they first moved in. Oh, how she missed her old neighbours, never heard as much as a bleep out of them.
“What kind of marriage do you think the Mills had?” Ludmilla feels like she has already answered this question, repeatedly. She sighs wearily. “I think they made each other miserable and they enjoyed being miserable. I don’t know how Daniel coped living with that woman.” He loved her and she loved gin. She loved him for the alcohol he gave her, and Ludmilla had no doubt she loved any other man who brought her alcohol. Ludmilla thinks again of Paul’s tolerance for Anne-Marie and shudders slightly.
As if Grimm knows what she is thinking, he asks, “Have you had any suspicions or seen any evidence that either of them were having an affair?”
Does she say what she is thinking? No, this is silly, too many ridiculous crime programmes that Paul just won’t stop watching. Paul is not and never has been unfaithful. Whilst she has her suspicions of Anne-Marie, she has never seen anything.
“Daniel, I think, is too cowardly to have an affair.” Wouldn’t say boo to a goose, no wonder he had ended up with Anne-Marie. Ludmilla sees Grimm fiddling with a prized ornament, which nervously distracts her from the question. She forgets to tell the police officer about the strange car she sometimes sees parked in the middle of the day. But judging by the bored expression on the female officer’s face, they wouldn’t be interested anyway. Just like Paul, they think she is a nosey old woman, with too little to do. Paul insisted that it is probably just someone visiting the Nobles or the Hutchings. “People are allowed to have friends and visitors, Ludmilly,” he had chuckled.
She can’t make them understand what it was really like living next door to Anne-Marie Mills. The fear Anne-Marie threw into Ludmilla, with the same force she threw the cans and bottles into Ludmilla’s garden with a loud, satisfied, “Here’s another for you, Lady Bitchski.” How on the bad days, Ludmilla was afraid of every bang.
Grimm asks, “Is there anything else you wish to tell or ask us?”
Ludmilla doesn’t think anything else really matters now. She is starting to feel better. Joyful even. Anne-Marie is dead, really, actually dead. She had seen the ambulance arrive yesterday but thought the bitch would come back, just like last time. Ludmilla excuses herself saying she is a little tired and can’t think of anything else.
Everyone the officers talk to say they are tired, all for the same reason. Grimm asks Ludmilla a few more questions about the neighbourhood and then gives her his card, telling her to call if she thinks of anything else.
Colvin smiles politely and says nothing until they are out of earshot. “There is something she is not telling us.”
“That, my dear, is why we have repeat visits.”
“She really didn’t like you touching her ornaments.”
Grimm flashes her a cheeky boy’s grin. “Why do you think I was touching them?”
At the next house, across from the Mills, a headless doll lies abandoned in the middle of the path. Another set of doll’s legs can be seen peeking out from beneath a bush. The grass is overgrown and weedy, with glittering crisp packets in the place of flowers.
Grimm rings the doorbell and a small girl answers. She looks at the police uniforms, Grimm’s smiling face and Colvin’s forced smile and takes a deep breath and starts shrieking, “Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Lenore! What?” A voice replies from upstairs. “I have told you a …” A dishevelled woman comes into view. She takes two steps down the stairs before she notices the officers, two more steps before she remembers she is clad only in a stained pink dressing gown. “I umm … can you give me a minute?”
Grimm nods, still smiling, oblivious to the woman’s embarrassment.
“Lenore, come here, please,” she calls to the little girl.
“Why?”
“Just come here.”
“Why, Mummy?”
“Just come here,” the woman says desperately. They both disappear upstairs and a faint, “Chante, can watch your sister for a minute?”
“But Muuuuum!”
Colvin closes the door behind them gently and they stand in the middle of the living room surrounded by a mess of toys. They take in the family pictures, the random stains and abandoned magazines. Three identical houses, three totally different occupants.
In this house, they dare not move. Colvin thinks about the mess in the Mills’ house, the neatness of the Bryskis’ house and now this chaos. But this is a happy mess, no hate or anger here.
The woman reappears, dressed in denim shorts and a purple-sleeved top. “Sorry about that.” Grimm notices, with a slight smile, that several ladybird stickers have been stuck to her top in random places. “How can I help you?”
“I am DCI Nicholas Grimm and this is DCI Sam Colvin, we would like to ask you a few questions.”
“Oh! Please sit down. Can I get you a drink?”
“No, thank you.”
The woman gestures to a stained sofa and then spends a few moments fussing over the mess. As she bends over, Grimm catches sight of another ladybird sticker.
The officers perch on the edge of the sofa carefully. “Sorry, I have two young daughters and, well, you know,” Laura mumbles and Grimm laughs in agreement.
Unsmiling, Colvin takes out her notepad as Grimm asks, “Can I take your name?” with an almost flirtatious tone.
“Laura Noble.” She grins back.
Colvin inwardly rolls her eyes as Grimm explains that they are investigating the death of her neighbour Anne-Marie Mills.
Laura looks shocked. She finally manages to stammer out, “She is dead?”
“Do you know Anne-Marie or Daniel Mills?”
Laura pauses before speaking. “Most people on this street know of them … I don’t really know Daniel but I have had a few … encounters with Anne-Marie.” We all know who they are and we wanted them to leave, says the expression on her face.
“MUUUMMMMY!” a wild scream comes from upstairs followed by a loud thump.
“Erm, please excuse me a minute.” Laura bolts upstairs before Grimm can answer. There is another thump and the officers can hear Laura saying “Please can you be quiet for a few minutes. Mummy needs to talk to the police.”
“Why are they here?”
“The mean lady has had an accident. Why don’t you play with this for a few minutes? Mummy will be back soon.”
“Does this mean we can play in the garden again?” The older girl’s voice asks.
The officers can’t hear Laura’s reply. A few moments later she comes back downstairs, smoothing down her sleeves with a cheerful, “Now, where were we?”
“Ah, you were saying you had a few encounters with Anne-Marie.” The look on Laura’s face suggests that she wishes they had forgotten she said that.
“We have had a few … upsets. Chante and Lenore have upset her a few times but we don’t really know her that well.”
“Upset her?”
“She gets upset if she hears them playing in the garden. Lenore can be a bit … screamy. We had to stop the girls from playing outside.”
If Anne-Marie even heard a child whispering, she got upset. She would start screaming out the window for them to shut the fuck up. The young girls had learnt several words that children of their age shouldn’t know. Any sound of children caused Anne-Marie to hammer on Laura’s door, demanding that Laura keep those brats under control. Laura had on one occasion screamed back that she was the only one out of control. There is still a large dent in the Noble’s front door to prove it. But Laura doesn’t explain this to the officers, she hasn’t even told her friends why their children aren’t allowed to visit her house. She doesn’t want to talk about it to anyone.
